Monday, March 9, 2015

An empty house at the end of icy Allagash Trail
Road. Split-level, big windows covered with invisible paper, teal wall-to-wall
carpet, teal carpeted steps and upstairs hall. Band names on the wall. Bathroom. A soft
couch. We waited for the Holy Komodo while we discussed age. A woman asked if I
knew Tom Leotard. Possibly she thought I might be Tom Leotard or, as likely,
she wanted to sell me some Tom Leotard.

Downstairs for the Holy Komodo. We stood against
the wall to watch. “How do you make a cult following?” My companion asked; the
cult followed. My companion asks—she’s interested in how people make an idea actual
in the world and subsequently cause the world to take notice. Bare cement
walls, stamped by plywood forms. White wiring wrapped around the support beams.
Bright, single-cell organisms projected on a sheet behind the band. Nina on keys,
sang, dark hair flash and keyboards.

Flock of Seagulls hairdo camera-phone filmed the
band, the audience, and us interlopers. A woman with her boyfriend behind her
grinned. A crowd-surfer barely cleared the ceiling beams. “If you must mosh,”
Nina said, “do it away from the equipment we’ve spent all our money on.” She
was obeyed. My companion noted Flock of Seagulls hairdo; “If I had hair like
that, I’d—” the rest of her comment lost, but something like, “—voodoo fan.”

From where I stood, Joel, the drummer, was the
most visible member of the band. Pink and salmon, all joy—before the show he’d
told an anecdote, said, of his brother—“he’s a lot skinnier than I am”—a claim
hard to believe. Komodo’s recorded output in no way prepared me for the vigor
of his drum work (in retrospect, hinted maybe by “Make Time”). He sat and he stood.

My thoughts were not especially interesting.
Teenagers in the midst of an experience that—if remembered—will become a
shorthand for who they think they are. People who go to house shows. Who shout: I
was in that place. Pressed by the reptile nation, we braced ourselves against
the wall.

An angry woman clutched a glass pitcher of ice
water to her chest. My companion asked, “What do you think she’s on?” The angry
woman shouted, in response to someone else’s interest, “You’re not my friend!” The
pitcher sweated. The angry woman sat hard in a wooden rocking chair. Maybe she
ate some bad Tom Leotard.

\\ feature / texture / on wave / [we] land //
hollow sound [in] strings \\ hold hands / to bow // Hydrogen Jukebox (1990) \\
(Glass says, “the first time [Ginsberg’s performance] was perfect… / used
[recording of Ginsberg reading “Wichita Vortex Sutra”] in the tour… \\ after he
died / I didn’t / play it / for a long time // too painful / I didn’t want to
hear it \\ one day I put it… / the only good thing / about this now / is a I
know / how it goes”) \\ a hymn / (Glass says, “I’m an old man… \\ vortex is
like / an energy system / sutra is / a prayer.”)